Assessing walking adaptability in stroke patients

Daphne J. Geerse*, Melvyn Roerdink, Johan Marinus, Jacobus J. van Hilten

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Purpose: The ability to adapt walking is important for safe ambulation. Assessments of impairments in walking adaptability with the Interactive Walkway may aid in the development of individualized therapy strategies of stroke patients. The Interactive Walkway is an overground walkway with Kinect v2 sensors for a markerless registration of full-body kinematics, which can be augmented with (gait-dependent) visual context to assess walking adaptability. This study aims to evaluate the potential of the Interactive Walkway as a new technology for assessing walking adaptability in stroke patients. Materials and methods: 30 stroke patients and 30 controls performed clinical tests, quantitative gait assessments and various walking-adaptability tasks on the Interactive Walkway. Outcome measures were compared between stroke patients and controls to examine known-groups validity. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to assess the relationship between walking-adaptability outcomes and commonly used clinical test scores of walking ability and spatiotemporal gait parameters of unconstrained walking. Results: Good known-groups validity for walking-adaptability outcomes was demonstrated. In addition, the vast majority of walking-adaptability outcomes did not or only moderately correlate with clinical test scores of walking ability and unconstrained walking parameters. Conclusion: Interactive Walkway walking-adaptability outcomes have good known-groups validity and complement standard clinical tests and spatiotemporal gait parameters.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION The Interactive Walkway allows for a comprehensive walking-adaptability assessment. Good known-groups validity for walking-adaptability tasks was demonstrated and walking-adaptability tasks complemented clinical tests and gait parameters. The Interactive Walkway has potential for monitoring recovery of walking after stroke. Assessments of walking adaptability may contribute to individualized interventions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3242-3250
Number of pages9
JournalDisability and Rehabilitation
Volume43
Issue number22
Early online date18 Mar 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work is part of the research program Technology in Motion (TIM [628.004.001]), which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, interpretation of data, decision to publish, or writing of the manuscript. We would like to acknowledge Bert Coolen for customizing the Interactive Walkway software to the specific purpose of this study. We would also like to thank Elma Ouwehand for her help with the measurements.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • assessment
  • gait
  • known-groups validity
  • Stroke
  • walking ability
  • walking adaptability

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